Cold Fusion
by DJLiopleurodon
Summary: Sequel to "Bound" - "If Clint Barton looks at me like I'm made of glass one more time, I'm going to..."
1. Chapter 1

Title: Cold Fusion

Author: DJ Liopleurodon

Rating: Currently T - will probably go up

Disclaimer: I think its stupid that we have to say it at this point, but I claim no-ownership-of-these-characters-Hail-Marvel."

Special thanks to my awesome beta - Ringo01

**Black Widow**

If Clint Barton looks at me like I'm made of glass one more time, I'm going to kick his ass.

I could do it too.

We are sitting in a cafe on a side street in Paris. I catch him looking at me over his demitasse when I glance up from _Le Figaro_. Even through his dark sunglasses, I can feel "that" look in his eyes. At the mixture of self-reproach, affection and pity, anger flushes hot across my cheeks and my heart clenches a little. I want to slap him.

I'm torn between reminding him that even trying his damnedest, I still beat him and pointing out how crucial he was in the battle of New York. I'm not sure what, if anything, I could say to reach him. There seems a gulf impassible between us as he wrestles with what Loki did to him. Clint always knows what to say to me to calm me and bring me back from the brink—often it's nothing—and I used to be able to do the same for him. But what can I possibly say to him to assuage the guilt he feels even though we both know how little control he had?

We've recently arrived in France where we were scheduled to "meet" with the council via a secure web link at the US embassy for debriefing. I went in for my grilling first; the contents of such tribunals are sealed. Suffice it to say I told the truth, the almost-whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Following his debriefing by the council, Clint disappeared for hours until he came stumbling back to our hotel three sheets to the wind. He woke up the next morning, threw up in the tiny hotel bathroom and went back to bed. The council called me in for a second interview that day and seemed very insistent that I betray some hint that might contradict Clint's story. They had already debriefed Fury, Hill, Selvig and whoever else they could, but they still wanted evidence Clint had been acting voluntarily. I think our testimony finally convinced them, but I bet it will be a good long time before we get a decent field assignment again.

That's fine with me; this is my first vacation in... well, ever.

Now if only I could get Clint to stop berating himself. If that is, in fact, what he's doing. Even before the debriefing, he was pulling away from me; retreating into his Hawkeye persona. The lone-gunman, keeps-his-own-counsel thing impressed the hell out of the junior agents, but it has been a long time since he's been that way with me. Our partnership has always consisted of complete confidence, more so since we started sleeping together.

After arriving in Budapest, we spent two weeks in quiet comfort and loud sex. It's so freeing to just **be** somewhere; it's an entirely foreign concept to me. We weren't following anyone, gathering intel or awaiting a kill order. We weren't trying to blend in as locals or invisible nobodies or Russian arms dealers or obnoxious American tourists. Despite the world-wide attention on the Avengers, no one is focused on us. We are invisible next to the Hulk and the rest. We've been free to go where we pleased unnoticed.

We talked, we ate, we walked, we made love and we trained for the simple joy of it.

But it didn't last long.

A small park near our hotel has an athletic field where several martial arts schools work out several mornings a week, so no one raised an eyebrow when we began to spar there too. We had to be careful to keep our more showy techniques in check. We didn't want to attract spectators.

We spent hours there. A few days before we left Hungary, our session started out like always, sparring and exulting in the precise movements; evenly matched and constantly challenging one another. I never feel so close to anyone as I do when Clint and I face each other like this. The fluidity and synchronization we have as we move together is a singular experience.

That day, the experience ended with him pinning me on the grass, face to face and breathing hard. I watched the triumphant sparkle in his eyes die as he lay on top of me. He got up, grabbed his towel and wiped his face as he headed for the hotel. He has refused to train with me ever since.

And it's really pissing me off.

Even more than the reserved, almost perfunctory way he's been fucking me ever since that day.

So here we sit in the supposedly most amorous city in the world, surrounded by saccharine-sweet couples wandering the streets and, I swear to God, feeding each other fucking crepes, a mile apart even though our knees are touching beneath the table.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. It's a secure transmission call and Nick Fury's unmistakable voice is clear:

"_Enough screwing around. It's time to get back to work." _

Want more? Reviews spur me on. In the mean time, read and review the first story in the series, "Bound." (Yeah, I hate the title, too.)


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Cold Fusion

Author: DJ Liopleurodon

Rating: Currently T - will probably go up

Disclaimer: I think its stupid that we have to say it at this point, but I claim no-ownership-of-these-characters-Hail-Marvel."

Special thanks to my awesome betas - Ringo01 and LillyFlora

_Author's notes: I just published my first PWP and I'm kind of excited about it. Its called _Just a Fantasy_. I'd love a read and review._

_The dialogue in the bunker scene from taken directly from a deleted scene in the movie._

* * *

**Hawkeye**

Fury calls us to the Helicarrier's briefing room to give us our assignment. He enters and tosses a mission brief on the table. I want a crisis dire enough to call in the whole Avengers team.

Stark is rebuilding his tower. Bruce Banner is geeking out in Stark's R&D department. Steve Rogers is rediscovering America. And me - I'm hoping Fury is reassembling the team to deal with a global threat; something to distract me and give me a chance to atone. I flip open the file. Drug cartel? Mad scientist bent on world domination? A hit on a human trafficker?

Nope.

Watching Selvig.

And Natasha has clearly been assigned to watch me; punishment for her loyalty to me. Clearly, either the council wanted to stash both Selvig and me in a single location or to divide Strike Team Delta by banishing us to another underground bunker. During my debriefing, they played video of our fight on the Helicarrer. They must think that being confined together after that would erode our professional relationship. Perhaps they are hoping to re-question us a few months and get a less united account of the events leading up to and during the battle of New York.

Fury didn't disabuse them of this belief by revealing the extent of our relationship. I suppose I should be grateful to Maria Hill for holding back what she knows about Tasha and me. By now, I'm sure that she and Fury know about us. At this point, I don't think there is much Fury doesn't know about any of us.

I'm surprised being assign to a mission with my long time partner is considered a punishment. I'm actually surprised to be given a mission at all. I'm shocked I haven't been court-martialed. I didn't even lose my fucking security clearance.

Selvig's resentment of me the first time was palpable. He hated having a SHIELD observer as he worked with the Tesseract, hated my layman's questions and my biweekly reports, hated my enforcement of security protocol. I don't imagine our tenure in Loki's service has improved his opinion of me. Nor do I suppose having two babysitters will improve his feelings of the situation.

I should be thrilled at being assigned to such a quiet, easy mission with the woman I...am sleeping with. Instead, I'm terrified of the close quarters. The time in Europe became increasingly difficult as I gained more perspective on what happened and as the nightmares became worse until they intruded into my waking hours. The people I killed. The destruction I helped bring about. What I said and did to Tasha. What I almost did... Selfishly, this haunts me the most. I can still see the fear in her eyes, still taste her blood in my mouth, hear the way her breath hitches when I unexpectedly get too close to her.

For the thousandth time, I shake off these thoughts.

A quinjet takes us as far as O'Hare where a private jet is waiting to take Selvig and us to a small SHIELD facility in Utah; another concrete hole in the desert.

"You've got to be kidding," Selvig says as I board the aircraft, "SHIELD couldn't find me another babysitter?"

"Oh, they did," I say. He looks relieved. "You've met my partner, Natasha Romanoff. We'll be handling your security for the next few months." His smile becomes fixed as he realizes he's stuck with me.

"Dr. Selvig," Tasha says pleasantly, extending her hand, "It's nice to see you again."

She's turning on the charm, slipping into one of her personas. That fact this she's doing it for me, simply to cover my discomfort, makes me a feel a little sick. But I'm also vastly grateful to her.

Soon after take off, I settle in for a nap, trying not to notice the pilot's inexpert handling in the crosswinds. I suppose if I'd wanted to fly us the rest of the way there, they might have let me. Instead, I'm going to sleep off the remaining jet lag. I must be getting old; I never had trouble adjusting to time changes before.

As I begin to doze, Selvig begins to converse genially with Natasha. I drift in and out, catching snippets of their discussion. Most of what he says was covered in the mission brief but Tasha listens, feigning rapt attention.

"...Cold fusion is a nuclear reaction that occurs at near-room temperature, to put it in simple terms. Until now, it's been a pipe dream, the holy grail of physicists, yes, but also considered somewhat of a junk science by many. An impossibility. This will change all that. You see,..."

"...Low-energy nuclear reaction..."

"How does it differ from the Arc reactor technology?"

"Oh, it's very different, in the first place, the Arc technology is proprietary. Also..."

"But it does involve palladium."

"No, no, that's where it differs from the traditional understanding of the term. I suppose I should coin a new term, but the D.O.E..."

"No by-product whatsoever?"

"The Tesseract showed me..."

"...similar to the power generated Tesseract..."

"...still consistent with the Bohr model..."

_I'm back in the bunker. It's wet and cold and Loki is standing behind me. I'm prepared to give him anything and everything he asks for._

_Dr. Selvig is gushing, "This is wonderful. The Tesseract has shown me so much. It's more than knowledge. It's truth."_

_"I know. It touches everyone differently," Loki says, smiling magnanimously. He turns to me, "What did it show you, Agent Barton?"_

_"My next target."_

_Selvig chuckles. "Stick In the mud. He's got no soul." He addresses me, "No wonder you chose this tomb to work in."_

_"Well, the Radisson doesn't have three levels of lead-lined flooring between SHIELD and that cube," I snap, annoyed. Selvig concedes the point with an ambivalent gesture and turns back to his work. That we're able to display these emotions, to play out the simmering hostilities we've had for months strikes me for the first time. Resentment and irritation curdled into animosity here under Loki's control. I wonder, now, as I dream, why Loki allowed, or even fed, these feelings._

_"I see why Fury chose you to guard it," Loki compliments. I turn away and Loki follows._

_"You're going to have to contend with him, sir. As long as he's in the air, I can't pin him down. He's going to be putting together a team." I already know Fury will have enacted the Avenger's Initiative. He sent me full dossiers and assessments a few months ago and I committed them to memory._

_"Are they a threat?" he asks. His tone suggests certainty in quickly dispatching any human interference, but that he isn't completely discounting Fury._

_"To each other, more than likely," I shrug. "But if Fury can get them on track—and he might—they could throw some noise our way."_

_"You admire Fury."_

_"He's got a clear line of sight," I say neutrally._

_Loki's tone turns cold, "Is that why you failed to kill him?"_

_I stop short as he proceeds down an empty corridor. "It might be. I was disoriented. And I'm not at my best with a gun," I shift uncomfortably, wondering if I'll be able to defend myself._

_Loki stops stiffly and rounds on me. "I want to know everything you can tell me about this team of his. I would test their mettle. I am weary of scuttling in shadows," he paces side to side as he speaks. "I need to rule this world," he glances up in an absurdly grand gesture._

_"It's a risk," I say._

_He gazes at me levelly with his dangerous smile. "Oh, yes."_

_I'm becoming relieved that I'm not about to be reprimanded or worse for my earlier disobedience. "If you're set on making yourself known, I could be useful," I volunteer._

_"Tell me what you need," he says darkly._

_Vertigo spinning me, I begin to speak; betraying every trust, completely breaching every security, using my intimate knowledge of SHIELD systems and protocols to break every sworn oath._

_In outlining how I plan to steal the iridium, I also give him the grand entrance he wants as a distraction. I detail weaknesses in the Helicarrier's design—the huge, vulnerable turbines are obvious, but how to get close and how and where exactly to strike is not. I explain how we can get SHIELD tac-gear and a quinjet. I tell him, when he allows them to "capture" him, where they will imprison him._

_My mind skips over the next part, me on my knees before him, his gasp of satisfaction as he comes. *_

_His hand rests heavily on my shoulder, "Now, tell me everything you know about Fury's team..."_

I jolt awake choking as the jet makes a precarious decent. Dr. Selvig glances over at me, looking a little peaked as he grips the plush arm rests. Natasha sits calm and bored as she surveys the transparent LCD screen in her lap, reviewing mission data and schematics. She flicks her eyes up to mine in that effortlessly sexy way of hers. I meet her gaze for a second but look away, discomfited. I know she's getting pretty tired of my coldness and self-doubt. She sets her jaw and holds her shoulders in a way that lets me know how irritated she is.

* * *

* see my previous stories "Bound" or "Blank". Review them while you are at it.


	3. Chapter 3

_I've had this one on the burner for a while; long before I released chapter two. I've been ignoring it and writing other things. For most of the second half, my brain has been trying to write a third installment of Just A Fantasy because it really resisted this chapter. Let me tell you, switching between sexy Nat & Clint and angsty Nat & Clint is giving me whiplash._

I lay alone in my quarters.

I've barely spoken to Clint since we got here. Previously, we would manage to get some time together everyday; we would even pull off the occasional tryst. If we could do it on the helicarrier, we could certainly achieved it here in this sedate bunker-cum-laboratory. Probably daily.

He's drawn up rigorous schedules where one of us is always on duty - nothing particularly unusual about this. However, a nine hour shift is standard. We plan overlap for reports and briefings at shift change. One of us always on-call, but less senior agents took the third shifts. Here, we have twelve hours on and twelve off. Really, on such a detail as this, it's ridiculous. Once protocol was established, we could practically both work 8-5.

The small office we share for writing up reports remains austere and so organized that we never need to check in with one another.

I find my mind drifting; I imagine pinning him to the wall of the office and forcing him to fucking look at me; to talk to me. I'd tase him if I had to. I make him listen to reason, I force him to acknowledge how counterproductive this self-reproach is, I convince him it's _not his fault._ Somehow this scene always ends with him clearing the work table with a sweep of his arm as he lifts me onto it, unzipping my catsuit with his teeth.

We don't even lock the door.

This scenario recedes; reality returns. I am watching Strike Team Delta dissolve.

And why? Because I am afraid to confront my best friend?

This ends now. I'm done waiting.

===========

I'm still forming this resolution when I enter the little office in the morning. Clint sits in the only chair in the room, eyes dark from fatigue. I lean against the small work table, arms folded across my chest, and cock an eyebrow at him.

"I'm going to confess to Fury. To the council."

"What?" I stammer, my cold irritation giving way to utter confusion. "Confess what?"

"I lied to them. Told them I didn't remember a thing after Loki came through the portal. That was a complete blank. It's not true. I remember every second with more detail than any other moment of my life. Knew where his base of operation was—hell, I found it for him. Knew the source of every fucking supply: gear, arms, equipment. A goddamn quinjet! I knew—_know_—it all."

He paces the short span of the room a few times and then settles on the opposite side of the table.

"I told them nothing!" He shoves the neat piles of documents and reports on to the floor. He leans on the table, knuckles white. "I could have volunteered information, but I waited for them to ask and then I lied," he finishes quietly.

"Did you have intel on the chitari or leviathans? Something that could have helped us fight them?" I ask.

"No, of course not."

"Most of the gear had to come directly from SHIELD. You know how?"

"There were several layers of intermediaries..." he trails off before abruptly exploding again. "It doesn't fucking matter! I had actionable intel and I denied knowing any of it."

I can't argue with him. He's right. He withheld information; very valuable information. If he admits this, he will be court-marshaled. If I had to answer truthfully, he should be. But I can't let that happen, to allow him to throw his career away. I try a different tact.

"If you do this, it's my ass, too! I've worked..."

He cuts me off as I struggle for words. "Did you lie to the council, to Fury, falsify any data to cover for me?"

"No..."

"Then what do you have to worry about, Tasha?" His voice has never sounded so weary.

"Well, no. Yes, yes, I did, I think. When you came to in the medical bay, it was pretty obvious that you had some, if not complete, recollection. I told them you were incoherent for a few minutes and, after the drugs kicked in, you started making sense but _didn't_ know anything about Loki. It was true, in a way, you didn't have any intel we could act on. You didn't know where he was, did you?" He shakes his head. "And at first, you didn't make much sense."

He shrugs. "I'll tell them I lied to you, too."

"You told me you remembered everything. I did not tell them that."

I should be court-marshaled, too. I knew, without him telling me, what he was going to say and edited my account accordingly. I was complicit, although the far-reaching implications escaped me at the time. I would still have covered for him, but I would first have tried to convince him to relay the information.

"How much of it would be useful now?"

"There are people trafficking SHIELD assets." He laughs mirthlessly. "Seems like that would be pretty fucking useful to know. The rest," he shrugs, "probably not relevant, not by the time they debriefed us."

"They know your," I correct myself, "_the_ assault team arrived in SHIELD gear and on a quinjet."

"They don't know where to start looking. I do."

"We need to..." I grope for a plan, but I'm still in such shock, the gears in my mind don't engage. I reason that if we could somehow convince Fury to let us look into this, Clint could redeem himself without destroying his life. We could argue Clint found them once, he could find them again. Getting out of this abysmal assignment would just be an added benefit; one Clint sorely needed.

"It's not just that, Nat, and we both know it." He lowers his head and stares down at his hands. "I can't... I just can't."

"Can't what?"

"Can't eat. Can't sleep. Can't touch you, can't look at you, can't even think about you without remembering. My stomach hurts just being in the same room with you. I just want it to stop," he murmurs, defeated. "I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. I want to look at you and not feel sick with guilt. I set things up where we don't see each other much, thought that might help..."

"How's that working out?"

"I miss you. I miss _me_. Us. Whatever it was, whatever we were. I've completely fucked it up."

I start to deny it, but I can't; he has fucked it up, but probably not in the way that he thinks. I close my mouth and wait for him to continue.

He meets my eyes for a few moments before returning he gaze to the table. The set of his shoulders is both tense and defeated. "I never knew I could be so cruel."

"_You_ weren't that cruel."

"I don't know," he exhale through his teeth. "The more distance I get, the more I think, what if all Loki did was to unleash my darkest self? What if he just let me be what I really am."

"You are the guy who looked into my eyes, and saw something worth saving. The idiot who brought me back to Fury like some kid with a stray dog. The warrior who stood with gods and monsters armed with a bunch of sticks. The friend who..."

He shrugs ambivalently. I can't decide if I want to hug him or to hit him.

This isn't how I saw this conversation going. I expected to yell at him; he's stubborn but I know how to deal with a determined and angry Clint. I have no idea how to handle lost and self-destructive Clint. I promised him when we first became partners that I wouldn't use my training to manipulate him. I have mostly kept that promise. But even if I wanted to, I'm completely adrift. I have no idea how to navigate any of this. Feelings of tenderness crash against despair and utter fucking frustration.

"You are right, you know, you _are_ fucking 'this' all up. But not with what happened. It's with what's happening now - you are pushing me away and punishing yourself."

"You think I'm being a martyr?" He sinks into the room's only chair.

I move close to him and he rests his temple against my belly. I run my nails along his scalp and he exhales wearily. Relief at the first physical contact we've had in weeks pricks at the back of my eyes.

"I think you need me to hate you as much as you hate yourself. I would have done anything to get you back and don't want to lose you again."

I want to add 'I love you,' because its true; I never realized how true until this ordeal. All I want to do is comfort him, but I'm abruptly exhausted from pleading with him.

So I don't finish with this declaration, I finish with an ultimatum instead. "But _you_ will lose _me_ if you don't get it together. I need my partner back. Or not at all."

I turn on my heel and leave to office before he can respond or I equivocate.

God, I'm such a bitch sometimes.

* * *

_I'm going to try to get chapter 4&5 up as soon as I can. One of those two will be a sexy chapter. Reviews will make the writing go faster._


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